essential magento extensions

Sometimes we all need the easier ways to grow our businesses by attracting more visitors and promoting the products on the virtual world. Whether it’s about tracking the sales, engaging more visitors, reducing cart abandonment, Magento extensions prove to be the most effective tools to do things easily, without customization.

For digital marketers, the list of useful extensions can be endless. However, since the Magento extensions offer great benefit for businesses to promote brands and products in the target market with ease, I bring to you the top solutions you’d find useful in a budget. The below-listed extensions are aimed at accelerating marketing process and saving time for the things that really matter.

Advanced Reward Points

This is a first of its king Magento reward points extension, designed to help store owners attract more visitors, no matter they purchase or not. With this extension installed on the Magento store, website visitors enjoy reward points for their activities done on the store such as registration, newsletter subscription, shares, likes, etc. The reward points are virtual currency and can be used for future purchases. The Advanced Rewards Points Magento Extension turns things into win-win situation for both the buyers and the sellers as shoppers get more new visitors while the visitors get free rewards and save on product purchases.

Features:

Improved brand recognition as you can count on the prospect of getting more exposure and recognition.

More buyers visit your store results into increased customer loyalty.

Store owner can create different rules about the reward points’ redemption.

Store visitors get rewards for different activities such as registration, comments, reviews, etc.

The reward points can be used in multiple ways – to shop, to pay.

Customers can keep a track of their reward points.

Guest Abandoned Cart

Another great Magento extension by Softprodigy is the ‘Guest Abandoned Cart’ that is designed to let your users have a flawless experience when buying online. With this extension, shoppers are no longer required to undergo the lengthy registration process to save cart product. Instead, they can simply provide the email address and a link of cart will be sent to the address. The Magento guest abandoned cart extension comes with abandoned cart email template customization feature. Shoppers can simply click on “Save Cart” button and the entire cart products will be saved.

Features:

Save entire cart products with a single click for future purchases.

No need to undergo registration or sign-in process to save cart products.

A link is sent to email with all products.

Admin gets a great data of the email addresses for promotional campaigns.

Admin can customize email template before sending emails.

Consumers can choose to unsubscribe emails.

Gifting Reminders and Cross Sales

Gifting Reminders and Cross Sales Magento Extension is a unique extension, allowing online shoppers to set reminders for special events such as birthdays, anniversaries and receive notifications as the event date approaches. The notifications are sent on the email that visitor would provide during the registration process. Visitor can also choose to receive reminder to one or more than one email addresses. Along with reminding shoppers about the special events, this extension proves to be a great support for your marketing campaigns as they can choose to buy through your store for special days.

Features:

Online visitors can save important dates and get notified before the event.

Option available to set time to receive event notification in advance.

Email notifications are sent to registered email (or more than one email).

Users have option to send greetings to a loved one for the event.

Great opportunity to get substantial cross sales.

With so many options available to give a boost to your marketing campaign using the premium Magento extensions, the above-mentioned ones are the top three we could find and probably the best ones available on the internet.

Every online shopping business has some goals—make money with sales. However, motivating customers to part with their hard-earned money isn’t that simple, especially when the competition is higher than ever. However, there are certain techniques that have been proven to encourage customers to spend more money and visit your platform again.
Let’s take a look at the 3 simple yet impressive techniques for increasing your eCommerce revenue and sales.

Limited Time Offers

“Customer procrastination is the enemy of sales.” Today, we are living in a highly competitive world and customers always looking for something amazing at a cheaper cost. They always want to wait a little longer to make the purchase. If you’re unable to make the buy the product, then you’ve got a lot of work to do to get them back to complete the checkout. Limited time discount offers are always encouraging, igniting a sense of eagerness to grab the offer before it ends. If you are running the store on Magento, then it’s possible to launch amazing deals with countdown timer with various Magento extensions.

The offers can be given in various forms – free shipping, percentage off of the final price, a coupon for future use, etc.

Dynamic Pricing

The idea behind the dynamic pricing is pretty simple—increase the profit on your most popular items. The dynamic pricing centers on having an eCommerce platform that can automatically change the price of an item based on customers’ activities.

For example, you can customize your website in a way that automatically offers lower prices during the off-peak hours. Why to offer lower price? Wondering the idea was to make more money? Well, let’s think of it this way…would you rather have a customer that leaves your site altogether giving you no profit or have one that buys an item that nets a lower profit?

If reducing price is not your idea, this next thing might make you feel better. Use customer information to determine how much to charge. You can use various Free Magento Extension to make your website to capture as much customer data as possible. Things like purchase history, dollars spent, email addresses, and more. This may take some time, but it’s well worth the effort when you start using the information in your pricing structure.

Cross-Selling

Cross selling is one of the most effective ways to increase the value of your online orders and the availability of Free Magento modules make it possible. Let’s assume you sell bathroom and kitchen accessories. A customer visitors your site and adds a faucet kit to the shopping cart. The kit orders includes only faucets. One logical cross-sell here is to ask if they would like to get a spray shower head.

Here is another example. You can install a Magento extension on your platform, allowing people to get notified about the important dates like birthdays, anniversaries etc. With the reminder of special events, you can suggest the users to buy products for the loved ones on their special day to share the love. This will not only encourage them to keep visiting your store, but also make them plan a gift purchase as well.

While cross-selling encourage more sales, but the key here is to offer items that make sense.

When planning to give a boost to your online eCommerce sales, make sure to take advantage of proven techniques like Limited Time Offers, Dynamic Pricing, and Cross-Selling to motivate your customers to buy more and boost your profits.

For a small eCommerce business to thrive amidst the competition, it’s important to be technically sound and perform better to avoid the bounce rate. And of course the base of the technical infrastructure of the business is the platform they are based on.

Magento happens to be one of the most dominating platforms these days, thanks to the amazing performance and wide range of Magento extensions. In spite of being one of the most well established eCommerce platforms, you are still bound to face some challenges during the development.

Here we’ll discuss some of the common hurdles an eCommerce store might come across during custom development and how you can overcome them.

Migrating to newer version

If you are already running an online store, it can be a little cumbersome for you to move to the newer version of Magento. While many of us might consider being on the existing version, but it is crucial keeping in mind the security and the advanced technology it offers. Upgrading to the latest version can result in a breakdown and data loss.

In order to upgrade to Magento2, you need to plan it properly with a professional developer. Don’t just jump into the process, but make sure to study what difference the new version is going to make to your store so you know well what you are opting for. Also set up a sandbox to test your upgrade before going live!

Difficulty in operating

Despite being one of the most flexible, easy-to-use, and more preferred eCommerce platforms, Magento users still face some difficulties in operating it. While the issues are not critical and a little technical knowledge can resolve them, but it is good to know something about Magento – it uses more RAM as it is based on PHP coding and developers requires to keep this in mind while working on the platform.

The issue can be overcome by opting for a customized theme for eCommerce development. You can also go for various ways to increase website’s performance.

Slow speed

The biggest concern every eCommerce store owner would face is the slow speed of Magento. It’s true to some extent as well. The reason here is the extremely extensible system and the features that were isolated to facilitate improvements in future. This results in more files and slow speed.

Well, it can be a minor issue if your system is being handled by an expert in Magento development and if you are following the different ways of speeding up Magento. Opting for a private server and a specialized host for your store can help you overcome this hurdle as they know how to handle the complex system.

Fussy upgrades

Magento takes care of its users with timely updates for better security and performance of the eCommerce stores, but it doesn’t follow a planned path for the same. There is a lack of well-processed documents in Magento updates which turns out to be a big shortcoming. This may lead to a breakdown when systems try to update their Magento to latest versions.

While there’s no hard and fast rule to get this rectified, you can make the process smoother by opting for a separate development environment with the help of an expert.
In spite of being an open source eCommerce platform, Magento has much more to offer. But there is nothing we can call perfect yet when it comes to the web. Magento has come up a long way since it was first launched and we can expect better things in the future too. So, you need an expert to get the things perfect when running a store on Magento.

Because Magento enjoys the largest slice in the eCommerce marketplace with more than 56,000 online shopping stores doing great business on Magento, wide range of Magento modules available and the percentage increasing each day, Magento stores are the prime target of cyber criminals. However, most ecommerce merchants rarely care about Magento security practices.

Although Magento regularly updates and releases security patches to help eRetailers protect their stores, there are Magento security best practices to follow in order to ensure the safety of the users and crucial data.

Best Practices to Protect Your Magento Store

When you have an online store, trust plays an important part because no user will want provide the credit cart details if they feel something fishy about your platform. By following the checklist, you can prevent Magento security issues.

No module from untrusted platform

When looking for the Magento modules, don’t go for the platforms that are offering unbelievable deals for the extensions that you will get at much higher cost. Third-party modules should be downloaded from a trusted online platform because in most cases, hackers invade through the virus they penetrate into your store through these modules.

Ensure dealing with only a reliable platform when you need premium Magento extension.

Action Points

Deal with only a reliable and trusted extension development company.

Be vigilant if something looks fishy and immediately remove the extension.

No simple text passwords

Hackers are expert at cracking passwords and do you think it would be difficult to crack “Password123” for them? To many people make the same mistake of using the same password that conceal sensitive information such as your Magento admin panel. Setting up an encrypted password may seem time consuming, but it really isn’t.

Action Points

Use password that is really hard to crack.

Password should never contain your name or admin.

Update all passwords to encrypted passwords.

Change your admin password routinely.

Make sure everyone else is doing the same.

Check Admin User Permission Regularly

Hackers, in order to get into your Magento admin panel, will need to create an admin user. So, keep an eye on number of users in the list and if you find anyone that should not be there then it is likely your Magento Admin panel has been breached.

As soon as you find the unwanted guest in admin panel, immediately inform your developer.

Action Points

Check your user permission routinely Systems->Permissions->Users.

If it looks suspicious, delete the account immediately and inform the developer.

Always Install Security Patches

While it might seem like a waste of money, but it is seen as a dead cost. It could be the best investment you make to keep your store secure. The true value of having security patches installed is based on how much damage someone could do if they are able to access to your store.

Magento team, along with offering security patches, also informs where the vulnerability may be. Before installing the patches, make sure to check the store for anything suspicious.

Lastly, although it failed to earn a place as number 5… Be kind and be nice. You can’t be sure who you are dealing with and what they can do, it could be an ex-employee, a disgruntled customer or even a stranger. Although most of the attacks are done by strangers. It is, however, better to keep smiling and remember to keep safe.

This Black Friday, grab the golden opportunity to bring matchless functionalities for expediting your business with Emagezone. We understand the value of your online retail business platform and hence we deliver creative Magento extensions to the global online marketers.

We are all set to make the coming Christmas season more joyous for you and your online business offering never-heard-before deals on premium Magento extensions and other Magento services.

Get 20% + 80% discount on Magento extensions.

The discount offer is applicable on all extensions listed on Emagezone website. And this offer is valid from November 21 to 25, 2016. To unleash the exciting offers, use promotional code – FRI20.

Store owners can simply visit the company website, register themselves and select the Magento extension they want to install on their store. Store owner get 20% discount on the product value while 80% of the value is instantly delivered to their online wallet.

The discount is offered as points, which means $80 = 80points. These points can be used for future purchases. The limit to redeem cashback points is 50 per purchase and cashback points will be valid till two months after the offer.

Avail this limited period offer to sprint up the growth of your online shopping business by deploying these profit-oriented services that come free with Magento extensions. Register now with Emagezone now and get flat 20% + 80% off with amazing cool benefits.

Subscribe and use coupon code to avail the offer benefits of this head-turning Easter Day Celebration Sale.

Magento has emerged as a dominant player in the online shopping marketplace for both entry level and enterprise level retailers. It’s the unbeatable performance and flexibility that most people prefer Magento as their preferred platform. The most appealing aspect of this platform is the availability of Premium Magento Extensions that bring great functionality to your store.

It’s good to go for the modules as the core functionality of Magento is sometimes not enough to run a successful eCommerce business. The competition is harder than ever before and hence to increase your conversion rate and deliver a better shoppers’ experience, you need additional features.
Here we have gathered what we believe to be the best add to cart Magento extensions available:

Ajax Add to Cart with Floating Effect

This Magento module adds an Ajax add to cart functionality to your online shopping store that too with an appealing product flying effect. It makes shopping an easy process where customers can simply browse through products at catalog page and hit “Add to Cart” button. This extension saves a lot of your consumers’ time, making shopping experience fun and simpler.

Ajax Add to Cart with Floating Effect is especially convenient for those who need to make large purchases.

Key Features

Customers can add products to cart direct from category page listing

Better user interface and interaction

Flying product image adds beauty to the store

Equipped with Ajax effect technology

Fully responsive to work great on compact devices

Developed using Magento Core Libraries and makes customization easy

Add Multiple Products for Custom Options & Configurable Products

It allows online buyers to add one or more products to cart with a single click from category or product listing page itself. Online buyers are free to add multiple products to cart from different categories (Simple, Configurable, and Custom Options Products). Also this allows buyers to add multiple products to cart from Cross Sells and Upsells product list.

Add Multiple Products for Custom Options & Configurable Products is an excellent sales booster, allowing consumers to enjoy the comfort of adding multiple products to cart while customizing the quantity according to their needs. It saves time required to travel through several trips to various pages when they select products to make purchases.

Key Features

Add multiple products to cart with custom options

Single click add to cart button added on product listing and product page

Option available to define product quantity from category page itself

Add products from Up Sells & Cross Sales

Add Multiple Products to Cart

This is another great extension available to make shopping fun for the online buyers by allowing them to add one or more products to cart with a single click and save a lot of time. What’s great about this extension is that consumers can define each product’s quantity at the same time as well. With Add Multiple Products to Cart Magento Extension, shoppers can do purchase multiple products at a single time from one category.
Customers can add multiple products to cart simply using the checkbox that is available with each product listed at your store.

If you run a large Magento eCommerce store, you definitely understand the efforts that consumers have to put to find something they require very fast. Default search option can be a time-consuming option and hence you must provide them with something amazing and that performs faster than the light. Integrating premium Magento extensions is a perfect solution for search through Magento-based stores.

A smart merchant should always be reducing the time required to find and purchase products at the store using a smooth-functioning navigation and customizes checkout process. The easier you make it to the consumers to search products, the more consumers will visit to get something new.

Make sure that you make it easy for the buyers to get everything within just a few seconds.
Emagezone is glad to announce the perfect solution to your needs. Our Magento extensions help customers find products with an option to display product thumbnail with text description as well. Check out our range of eCommerce modules to make the searching a matter of few seconds.

Enhanced Ajax Autocomplete Search

This extension will surely power-up your Magento store with the advanced default search feature by adding advanced autocomplete search functionality. Powered by Ajax, this extension incorporates advanced search feature to make searching a lot more fruitful, easier and hassle-free. This extension starts looking for related products with the minimal characters in the search box.

Consumers can choose the products that they intend to search from options displayed in the same place. If you are having more than 500 products at your store, then this is a solution for you, allowing consumers to search products the easiest way possible. Store admin can easily configure the module from the admin panel of the store.

Features

Ajax autocomplete functionality

Search in a particular category

More than 1000 products can be displayed in search results

Minimum characters required to show search suggestions

Results sorted by field

Search results with product image

Quick Search By Brands

For some online buyers, it’s all about the brand they trust upon. This means, they just want to make purchase from their reliable brands and hence they don’t want to explore the products other than that particular brand. Quick Search Brand is the most advanced Magento extension, allowing online buyers to check all the products on the basis of specific brands. One alphabetic search bar is displayed below top of the navigation bar from where customers can sort all the available brands alphabetically.
This cuts the hassle that online buyers may be undergoing while shopping for a particular product from their reliable brand by allowing them to access a wide range of shopping websites in a short duration.

Features

Search products by brand

Alphabetic search option created below the top navigation bar

All brands sorted alphabetically

Customers navigate through all brands at once

Brand identification made easy

Saves time & efforts

Quick Alphabetical Search

Online buyers just hate to spend time and efforts required to for searching through long list of products available on the eCommerce stores to find that they’re looking for. If your store is unable to provide them a smooth navigation and search experience, you’re likely to lose the potential buyer and this is where Quick Alphabetical Search comes into the picture.

This extension adds an alphabetical search bar below the top navigation bar of the store. This serves as a great tool to provide consumers a better user experience and make shopping fun for them. Buyers can click on the alphabets and browse through the available products on store.

Features

Search products alphabetically

Alphabetic search bar created

Completely customizable

Set font color

Compatible with latest Magento

Enhanced user experience

Once you’ve selected the Magento search extension that fits your business requirements, the next step is simple – purchase and install it. If you are unable to install if yourself, let the experts handle the technical task and they’ll do everything for you.